Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus which estimates a gazed position of a person in an image, and a method which is applicable for the apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-286995 discloses the method of estimating a position gazed by a person. In this method, an eye (or visual line) direction of the person is estimated from an image obtained by a camera, a positional relation between the estimated eye direction and a previously registered target object is obtained, and the gazing level of the target object is analyzed based on the obtained positional relation.
However, in the above conventional method, the target object is estimated from the estimated eye direction of the person, on the premise that the person is in a certain place. Therefore, there is a problem that estimation accuracy deteriorates if the person moves from the relevant place.